Airy Jack @AiryJack@tweetrex.co.uk

@ahelwer

This, I cannot say this loudly enough.

Technology cannot solve climate change, because climate change is not a technological problem...it is a social problem.

Stop asking candidates if they 'believe in climate change' and start asking if they understand it.

It's science, not Santa Claus.

Wealth of Elon Musk
2012: $2,000,000,000
2023: $248,900,000,000

Wealth of Jeff Bezos
2012: $18,400,000,000
2023: $153,100,000,000

Wealth of Mark Zuckerberg
2012: $17,500,000,000
2023: $104,900,000,000

Federal Minimum Wage
2012: $7.25
2023: $7.25

Three words: tax the rich.

"I want," the man said to the art robot, and then described an image in some detail.
"Certainly," said the art robot. A printout came out of its chest.
"Thank y- Hey! What's this?"
"A list of artists who make images of the kind you describe, and who are accepting commissions."
#MicroFiction #TootFic #SmallStories

‘Nothing can take its place’: dismayed Dartmoor wild campers share memories | Access to green space | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/17/dartmoor-wild-campers-share-memories-right-to-camp

‘We’re only seeing the negative’: UK farmers on Brexit and losing the common agricultural policy

As MEP for South West England, a rural area with a strong farming constituency, I tried so hard to make this case

But SW voters still chose to leave the EU

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/29/uk-farmers-impact-brexit-trade-deal-losing-common-agricultural-policy?CMP=share_btn_tw

Memo to the media:

Stop letting politicians get away with calling asylum seekers "illegal immigrants" or saying they're not coming to this country "the right way." Seeking asylum is legal. Presenting themselves at the border & requesting asylum is "the right way" to seek asylum.

One of the things I have liked about Mastodon is the encouragement to put alt-text on images. But as others have noticed, the more the network of mastodonians grows, the proportion of images with alt-text goes down.

It's not hard - please please PLEASE add alt-text to your images, even if it's just a quick note, and better if it's more descriptive.

#AltText #newbie #accessibility

“Satire is meant to ridicule power. If you are laughing at people who are hurting, that’s not satire, it’s bullying.”
-Terry Pratchett.

Ancient and beautiful amber pendants worn by hunter-gatherers some 10,000 years ago. Mesolithic period.

📷: National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen.

But seriously, as an anthropologist it drives me fucking crazy that people are so excited about learning Na’vi from Avatar and speaking fucking Klingon and trying to create new languages for their fantasy novel.

Actual human languages are dying because of colonialism and globalization and somehow nobody says “maybe I’ll use an actual dying language and get people excited about speaking that.” Nope, ima make some shit up and let that die. It’s ego over good and it makes me so sad.

Definitely no capitalist.

On this day, 25 December 336, the first recorded celebration on this date of the birth of Jesus Christ, a Jewish refugee and radical born in what is now Palestine, took place.
The bible makes no mention of Jesus's birth date, but 4th century Christians in Egypt chose to celebrate it on 6 January. The Western church later adopted the date of 25 December – winter solstice in the Julian calendar – which some scholars believe was in order to assimilate 'heathen' celebrations of the sun on that day.
While most Christian institutions today espouse conservative views, Jesus's early followers in the Middle East practised a form of communism. Historian Roman Montero explains that: "what happened was two general kind of practices; one that we can call 'formal communism,' in that it was a regulated and formal system, and another that we can call 'informal communism' in that it was a general moral dictate that governed behavior and attitudes.
"The 'formal communism' was the collection of goods and the distribution to widows, orphans, and those in need. This was done to the extent to where there was an organised daily distribution to widows, and to the extent that they could actually live from the distribution — this was no pocket change, it was a full welfare system.
"The 'informal communism' was the idea found in Acts 4:32 where it says 'no one claimed that what they possessed was their own' (Or 'no one claimed private ownership of any possessions'). This brings us back to the moral principle of 'from each according to his ability to each according to his need,' what the Christians were doing was re-organising their framework of obligations to one another — from things like a market framework, or a patronage framework — to a communist framework. They were creating a community in which people had a primary obligation to share with his fellow; to the point to where property lines became increasingly irrelevant'."

Merry Christmas everyone.

Check in on your people. The holidays are not always merry and bright for some.

U.S. Police kill more than 1100 civilians annually—unprecedented in the developed world.

A new app called TurnSignl, built by Black civil rights lawyers, deescalates police interactions with civilians & get everyone home safe.

Here's how it works.
1. Download the app
2. When pulled over by police, face time a lawyer on demand via voice activation. The call is also auto recorded
3. The lawyer guides the convo.

Download TurnSignl here or gift it to a loved one for free: https://www.turnsignl.com/gift

All jokes aside, remember what Christmas is really about, people.

Rich people being terrorized by spectres until they agree to pay their employees a living wage.

Are you sitting down? Here goes!

44% of all websites that exist right now run on WordPress.

Right now, connecting a WordPress site to the Fediverse is just a matter of installing this plug-in.

If just a fraction of WordPress sites connect to ActivityPub, then the network effect of the Fediverse will eclipse Big Social.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/

Very sad news to wake up to. RIP Terry Hall #TheSpecials https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/dec/19/terry-hall-lead-singer-of-the-specials-dies-aged-63